This invention relates generally to a carrier for transporting a plurality of containers, such as bottles, and more particularly to a container carrier having a handle that facilitates the use, transportation and storage of the carrier and the associated containers.
Carriers that package a plurality of containers by their necks and allow the containers to be carried are well known. The carriers are often plastic ring carriers, commonly called “six-pack” rings, which unitize a plurality of like-sized containers into a single package. These types of carriers are commonly fabricated from flat, thin gauge sheets of plastic. Holes through the middle portions of these carriers typically serve as means for grasping the carrier. Although these carriers allow for containers to be efficiently packaged, a significant drawback of these carriers is that they can be difficult and uncomfortable to carry due to the use of holes through thin gauge plastic as the carrying mechanism. This is particularly the case when used with heavy or large containers.
The problems with six-pack rings have been mitigated somewhat by the use of injection molded plastic carriers that have support ribs to provide support for lifting and carrying the carriers. This problem has also been addressed by the addition of fixed rigid handles to carriers and the use of paperboard box carriers with integrated fixed handles.
Although injection molded plastic carriers and fixed handle carriers facilitate the use of the carriers, the support ribs and fixed handles complicate the storage of these carriers. The support ribs on the injection-molded carriers make such carriers difficult to stack and store prior to being installed onto containers, and difficult to install efficiently and uniformly. Fixed handle carriers and paperboard box carriers with integrated fixed handles suffer from similar disadvantages because the fixed handles typically protrude from the carrier. As a result, the packaged containers cannot be stacked on top of each other and, thus, additional storage space is required.
A further drawback of many of the currently available container carriers is that once the containers are removed from the carriers, the carriers are not easily reused. The traditional plastic ring carriers are often damaged or ripped upon removal of the containers due to the thin gauge of the plastic. Fully enclosed paperboard box carriers that utilize punch out handles are usually torn open for removal of the containers. Moreover, for other carriers with handles that actually have a compact shipping profile, once the handles are engaged for use, the handle typically creates a raised package profile which does not easily resume its former compact configuration.
A handle disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,915 to Mattson, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, is capable of maintaining a substantially flat profile after repeated use. The Mattson handle, however, is designed primarily to be used in connection with individual containers, paperboard box carriers and the like. Moreover, although the Mattson handle addresses the problem it was designed to solve, the Mattson handle is made by cutting score lines ending in circular apertures, which is an inefficient manufacturing method and makes it difficult for the Mattson handle to be integrated into a container carrier that packages a plurality of containers by their necks.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a container carrier that is easy to use, even when packing and transporting large or heavy containers. The new container carrier should have a substantially flat profile when not in use, allow for a plurality of containers to be compactly packaged and easily stored and stacked, and maintain its initial form after repeated use. Ideally, the design of the carrier is one that can be efficiently manufactured and that allows for uniform and high speed installation of the carrier on containers.